In This Chapter

The toy industry, although far less entrepreneurial than it was when I got into the business over 30 years ago, is still a potentially lucrative frontier for the independent inventor. The toy industry is The Greatest Show on Earth. It is a high-wire act without a safety net in which manufacturers walk a financial tightrope that stretches from Christmas to Christmas. Corporate impresarios try their best to top one season’s hits the next year, and they rely, in part, on the magic of toy-inventing gurus to make it happen.

In few industries can one find such a blending of creative talents, disciplines, polytechnologies, media, theater, self-interest, circus, idealism, cynicism, masquerade, pomp, exaggeration, and ingenuity as prevails in the toy and game business, a fashion industry where no one wants to get caught with their trends down.

Today the toy inventor needs to think more like a brand manager, says David Berko, a managing partner in East West Innovation, LLC. The former senior executive at Hasbro and Mattel points to the compression of the retail environment as the reason. He observes, “The stakes are now so high that the decision by a toy company whether to move forward or not with a product depends on one or more of the large, mass market retailers deciding to carry the item.”